Symposium on Rationales for the Commandments

From the blog of the Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization:

The YU Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and the Leonard and Bea Diener Institute of Jewish Law will be hosting a day-long symposium on “The Rationales of the Commandments (Ta’amei ha-Mitzvot) in Historical Perspective” on Sunday, February 10, 9:30am-5:15pm, at Cardozo Law School (55 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY). Attendance is free, but advance registration is required; please register here, or by calling 212-790-0258. Here’s the schedule:

Ta’amei Ha-Mitzvot in Antiquity (9:30-11:30)

David Flatto, (Assistant Professor of Law, Penn State Law School), “Categorizing Commandments in Late Second Temple and Rabbinic Literature”

Yair Lorberbaum (Bar-Ilan Faculty of Law), “‘There are People who Consider it a Grievous thing that Reasons Should be Given for any Law’ (Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed III:31) – Ta’amei ha-Mitzvot and Halakhic Reasoning”

Commentator: Gerald Blidstein (Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)